If you never in your life want to hear a black woman either go off about why “she don’t need a man” or why it’s perfectly reasonable to settle for a broke felon going nowhere in life, perhaps we should retire the word GOLD DIGGER.

Just let it die.

Because many people have no idea what the word truly means in the first place. It came to prominence when old rich white men began marrying beautiful, plastic-surgery coated young women who clearly had nothing in common with them.

Except money.

One had it, the other wanted to spend it, and that was all. But that is a meme that has quickly dried up with the rise of the “pre-nup”.

Loooong forgotten is that period of history when the English aristocracy had no money and so they did that thing where they had their sons marry American heiresses for their money. Today only women are gold diggers and according to the oft abused logic, are only ever concerned about spending someone else’s money.

So let us talk about what the gold digger is or was.

A gold digger is defined as “a person who dates others purely to extract money from them, in particular a woman who strives to marry a wealthy man.”

Is a woman who wants to marry a man with more wealth than her a gold digger? NO. She becomes a gold digger when that is her only interest. The definition had two parts: Dating someone only to extract money + seeking someone wealthy in order to better be able to do this.

It is really tiring to me when I see people throwing this word at a black woman the minute she opens her mouth about wanting to date and marry a man of means or at the very least, has more money than she does. I get tired of this jank as hell word being thrown at black women who don’t settle for the unemployed gamer who needs to use her car to get around, the child molester with a heart of gold and every other form of undesirable that we automatically have EVERYTHING in common with because “we’re both black, and that’s enough”.

It’s been enough for so damn long, we looked up and found a permanent underclass. And nobody need pretend it was the master plan of some great white enemy.

NOPE.

It was the result of generations of black wombs making themselves available for men going nowhere. Until finally producing a generation of men indignantly demanding the right to refuse the security of marriage and giving the time of day to children THEY ALREADY HAVE but still, just temporarily, having access to a womb that will not be wanted or desired beyond a few brief occupations.

Woman alone. Child unknown. Nobody can find the father and deep down, the man was a suspected heel from the word, “Go.”

And yet, avoiding these type of realities requires an approach that is inexplicably mistaken for being a “gold digger”.

YES, at some point, a woman is going to be concerned that the man in her life, the one she hopes sticks around, has a reasonably lucrative occupation; some form of legitimate income that would emphasize follow-through and integrity. And certainly suggest the ability to feed and clothe not only her, but any children they may dare have.

Because for some of us, the struggle was real. Some of us are the offspring of those who did marry for love. Young people who were married with nothing but the shirts on their back and the love in their hearts.

And as a result of what followed, I don’t scoff at my parents’ strong insistence that I can marry for both love and security.

This is what it means to be a womb-guardian.

Let’s understand a womb-guardian to be a woman who does not engage a man in a romantic or physical sense unless she is sure he is the type of man by whom she would be happy to procreate. This is a very basic biological understanding, but then, it is one of the most impactful things in a woman’s life. The course of your life was set in large part because of who your mother chose to lay down with. So your children’s networking abilities, better access to opportunities, and ability to have their most basic needs met would be impacted by who you open your womb to.

And their children.

And their children.

And their children.

And probably their children, too.

So…when people play these little games where they act like any and every woman who is concerned about whether or not a man is financially stable is ONLY after their money, I get a little annoyed.

A gold digger I am not. A gold digger most black women are not. They can’t be. First, most black people have no gold to dig. And second, we all know damn well black women wouldn’t give us the opportunity to dig it because we aren’t worth dirt in eyes of the greater African American community.

So we are told go and figuratively spin straw into gold for ourselves and our children. Hence the bitter phrase, “I don’t need no man.” You get used to spinning straw into gold because any desire to be given anything is beat out of you by everyone making it their business to accuse you of only ever being a gold digger if you dare desire the financial support and stability of a two-parent household and a man willing to provide for the kids he helped make.

Black women have so many of their own things, so much of the “I don’t need a man” persona, so much of the “strong black woman can do anything-SUPERWOMAN” stereotypical crap as an almost direct correlation to dealing with simple as hell men who automatically assume that a black woman is best when she’s doing it all herself (Miss Independent…that’s why I love heeeeer….) or that she is only interested in the here and now and shiny things that he can buy for her.

Many black women do not have the luxury of a man buying a goddamn thing for her. Usually she buys it for herself. Usually she buys it for her kids. But sometimes, such women think it would be nice to have someone else help to do these things.

So please, save your “gold digger” talk. Take the word and bury it in the presence of a black woman. Don’t say it. Don’t accuse it. And don’t dare think you have any idea what in the blue hell you are talking about when you attempt to put that word on a sensible, educated woman just trying to seek out a mate who actually has some financial stability and wasn’t found a job by his probation officer.

Don’t say it to other black women, even if you call yourself helping. The ONLY thing you are helping to do is continue to lower the bar in terms of expectations of the man in one’s life. And we certainly have had lifetimes of that, haven’t we?